Rotcod
Zzaj, Improvijazzation Nation –
Moodfood - ICE: If that group name had come from any other
than the "Soulfood" label, I doubt it would have
gotten reviewed for a while. Since we've reviewed quite
a bit of stuff from "Soulfood", though, I suspected
this would be great... & my ears certainly weren't disappointed.
The opener, "Kaif Kun", reminds me (somehow) of
early "Sting", probably from the rhythmic persuasions
& vocal echo effects. DJ Free & Peter Schimke have
joined forces to astound your ears with up-to-date &
non-cliché beats that often approach somethin' you
might call "World Jazz". It's danceable as well,
& has flawless execution of rhythm. Some very pleasing
synthesizer works... my favorite cut is "Martini House",
which takes my ears way back to bands like Spyro Gyra, &
keyboardists like Joe Zawinul (Weather Report). This is
an excellent album through & through, with something
for every listener's ears. I give it a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Chris
Spector, Midwest
Record Recap –
The Soulfood gang let’s another side show as they
unleash their chill side with the help of some of the leading
lights o the genre. As with their other personality, they
know how to make the sound and the attitude right where
it should be. A tasty chill dance outing that offers new
aural delights from one of the most reliable underground
crews out there.

Rod Smith,
City Pages –
Beat-driven electronics and live instrumentation, like Ewoks
and Freemansons, belong to intrinsically different domains.
Attempts at interbreeding between the realms often generate
grotesque offspring, more lopsided than a partially fallen
soufflé and considerably less satisfying. Luckily,
MOODFOOD principals DJ Free and Peter Schimke made sure
all their musical chromosomes were properly aligned before
hauling in a posse of luminaries, local and otherwise, to
put the glisten on their first non-soundtrack collaboration.
Even as a simple augmented duo, the programming whiz and
keyboardist-around-town slide across genre boundaries with
Olympic-caliber grace, mixing “Martini House”
potentially unwieldy elements – shuffly house-music
tectonics, serious jazz piano, and high-disco string pyrotechnics
– as though they were water. The funky, hand drum
enhanced ballad “Butterflies” finds them aided
by the likes of Dave Matthews woodwind champ Richard Hardy,
bassist Billy Peterson, and breathy chill-compilation veteran
Julia Messenger in a quietly spectacular display of down-tempo
seductiveness. Granted, the album doesn’t exactly
break new, uh, un frozen water; Masters at Work first skated
the same terrain nearly 10 years ago, while the similarly
far-reaching efforts of Cold Cut and S-Express began in
the ‘80s. But as an act of global consolidation, Ice’s
cup runneth over very nicely indeed.